So when I was a kid, back in the 60's one Christmas I got a toy set from Mattel called "Major Matt Mason". Anyone remember those? They were these
bendy rubber astronaut figures which looked pretty lifelike, and they had a bunch of accessories. Major Matt Mason was their commander, and they had
other figures too. They supposedly lived on the Moon. Boy, lemme' tell ya, I was "into" Major Matt Mason toys like nobody's business! They were all
I wanted. So, over their relatively short run (66-71 I think) I got a bunch of Major Matt Mason stuff for Christmas and BD's, etc. At one point I
had the space station, the lunar crawler, the space sled and a bunch of other stuff. (Note - wish I would have kept all that stuff because it's worth
a fortune now, but that's another thread).
On a side note - a few years later I even sent Major Matt Mason on a real space mission when I was into Estes rockets. Yep! We rubber banded the
Major himself onto a big 'D-engine' Estes rocket and launched him. One of his bendy wires in his arms had broken, and I had another one, so he was
kind of expendable. Plus, one of his legs was kind of melted from a terrible plastic spaceship crash and resulting BBQ lighter fluid and modeling
glue fire in the garage (that was a COOL one...and boy did we get in trouble too! Mom even got "the Stick" out on that one!....OUCH!)
Anyway, all my friends wanted to come over and play with the MMM stuff. We'd dream up these elaborate space missions and so forth. Major Matt Mason
was straight-up COOL! In some respects he was my idol, but I digress. Shortly after MMM, and as the MMM craze was winding down (much to my horror!),
Mattel came out with another action figure series, but these figures were underwater adventurers, and they were even cooler in some respects. For one
thing, we had a small pool so the SCUBA genre fit right in. Well, I never got any of those toys, but one of my friends did. Now he didn't think it
was nearly as cool as I did. In fact, he kind of thought they were dumb, so he was always doing dumb stuff with them. I would beg him to let me
borrow them so I didn't have to do the dumb stuff he always wanted to do, but he'd never let me. At one point we were wrestling in the pool trying to
gain control of this one SCUBA diver figure in a desperate game of "keep away". Somehow, I don't even remember how now, the one action figure he had
got launched about 40 feet in the air. It arced up and over onto the roof of my house. POOF...Gone! DAMMIT!!
We looked high and low for that figure, even venturing onto the scary roof once (when Mom wasn't home). We rooted through all the bushes, looked in
all the gutters, we looked everywhere. Never did find it. In the following weeks/months I had saved up some money, and wanted to go to Toys R Us to
get one of these guys myself. I mean, they had SCUBA tanks and everything! Well, by the time I went looking for them they were nowhere to be found.
At the time, I didn't even know what their name was, so when I'd go in the store I'd try to describe what I was looking for and everyone would just
shrug like they didn't know. So, it was back to Major Matt Mason. That was as good as it was going to get.
I eventually outgrew Major Matt Mason and life moved on. For many years afterwards though I always wondered what happened to the action figure which
flew up on the roof. I would lay awake at night trying to mentally figure out where he could have gone. It was almost like a treasure quest; I
didn't want to play with the figure anymore as much as I just wanted to solve the mystery. Well, I never found him. We moved away and that chapter
of my life ended.
Several years ago I remembered this whole series of events for some reason. And, in addition to wondering what ever happened to that stupid action
figure, I was bound and determined to figure out what the name of the action series was. Now, armed with the Interwebz, I should be able to find out
anything, right? Nope. Then it became a quest of sorts...some stupid fun thing to do on the internet when I was bored.
Just today I was looking at some guys blog about the Major Matt Mason genre of toys. The guy was a history buff and big time collector. There was
even a conspiracy element to the disappearance of Mattel's Major Matt Mason and the Moon landings (interesting).
Moon Conspiracy
In the course of reading something caught my eye...a reference to a similar sized series of underwater action figures similar to MMM. Wow...could I
have finally stumbled onto and discovered what these mystical toys were??? He didn't go into much detail, but just enough to give me something to
search with.
Voila! SUCCESS!! Almost 50 years later....Sea Devils.
To this day I still wonder what happened to that Sea Devil toy figure, but now at least I know what they were. I've got half a mind to go out on Ebay
and buy one just for the heck of it. After all these years, I can still vividly remember that action figure sailing up into the air and vanishing
forever. Maybe I'll do just that...and go run a tub full of water, and...well, never mind! LOL!!
edit on 12/8/2018 by Flyingclaydisk because: (no reason given)